


The Decision

by Theblindassassin12



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Gen, Space Dad, This Is The Way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 13:55:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30107004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theblindassassin12/pseuds/Theblindassassin12
Summary: Din Djarin knows who he is. He has never had any reason to question the codes that he lives his life by. Until now.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	The Decision

The Mandalorian had been a member of the guild for years. Hunting was second nature to him, his skills in tracking and combat making him perfectly suited for the job. Fighting was simple when the only acceptable outcome was victory; win, and maintain his honor, dignity and reputation, or die in defeat. Do whatever necessary to ensure the latter never happened. There was no middle ground. Even if these ideals weren’t written into the code that he followed, they would still be a part of his code. 

The Way. 

He never questioned the rulesets that he lived his life by. He was never given a reason to. How many bounties had he collected? How many pucks passed across tabletops or fobs followed to the far reaches of the galaxy, to dusty desert planets and backwater swamps? The number wasn’t worth even thinking about. He didn’t keep track, he kept busy, quickly moving from one quarry to the next, collecting his pay and setting a course for his next destination. 

Why then, after all those years, all those successful missions, had this one caused him to go against everything he had ever known? He never cared to learn anything about the bail jumpers and criminals that he captured. He never asked what would become of them once they were handed over to whoever it was that was after them. It mattered less to him than the number of completed jobs he’d done. They’d made the wrong deal or stolen from the wrong person, gotten in over their heads and gotten their heads assigned a price. Mercenary or nobleman, gambler or thief, it didn’t matter to him. All that mattered was getting the job done. 

He hardly made a profit after spending on fuel and provisions, but he wasn’t in it for the credits. He wasn’t looking for riches or fame. He wasn’t really looking for anything. Just a life that didn’t require him to stay still for any length of time. It didn’t suit him, settling down. He’d had a home, twice. He’d lost his home, twice. His ship was the only home he needed anymore, and since it was just him, he didn’t have a need to profit so long as he had food and fuel enough to carry him through his next mission. So the questions? The hang ups? They weren’t about negotiating his prize or garnering recognition. 

Then why? 

He sighed, leaning back in his seat and letting his gloved hands fall from the controls to his lap. 

Why this one? 

It had started before he’d set out to track his bounty, before he’d even agreed to the job- a prickling sensation in the back of his brain. Whether it was an instinctual warning, some cosmic intervention, or a simple lack of sleep he couldn’t say, but it started as soon as he saw the first brick of beskar. 

He wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of taking on an imperial client. But the presence of a few stormtroopers wasn’t enough to give him pause. There had only been four of them, and for all the resources that the Empire had at its fingertips during the height of its power, top of the line weapons and armor for their foot soldiers had never been a priority. He liked his odds at four to one even if they had been properly armed and armored in more than the flimsy white gear that he had no doubt he’d make short work of. Regardless, once the door had opened there was no going back, not with a client like this.

The pin pricks in his brain weren't due to them at all. 

It was the heavy ingot, dark ribbons of silver-gray running through it, a distinctive clanging sound reaching his ears as the client set it on the table that had ignited the sensation. Beneath his helmet his eyes widened and his mouth fell open as the feeling intensified. 

Expensive, Greef Karga had said of the Mandalorian’s rate. Expensive typically translated to bulging sacks of coins, the origin of which didn’t matter much to him so long as the spending of them didn’t line imperial pockets. The Empire is gone. He’d said the words himself, but he knew that there were still hold outs, still those benefiting off of the crumbs of the former regime. He also knew that gone didn’t always mean gone forever, and he refused to play a part in its return by continuing to circulate the currency of the corrupt. Lower pay in less offensive coin was preferable to him, but lower pay wasn’t going to be the case with this one. He knew that going in. 

He’d taken unconventional jobs before, certain clients looking for an extra level of discretion or speedy results. His reputation as the best in the parsec was hardly a secret nor was it an exaggeration, and it got him more than his pick of pucks from Karga’s stack. A few times it had gotten him private meetings, face to face rendezvous in locked rooms and hidden basements with desperate customers seeking a chance to hire the Mandalorian. The pay for jobs like these was always as unconventional as the nature of the job itself, coming in the form of black market weapons or obscene amounts. Expensive. 

He’d never been paid in the stolen riches of his own people, though. 

He closed his fists tightly, the worn leather of his gloves groaning as he curled his hands into clubs. He could still feel the weight of that one single bar and the way that holding it made the foreign feeling intensify. His breathing was deep and heavy as he tried to fight the frustration and anger that were rising at his inability to reconcile his code with his creed. 

The alloy, stripped from the bodies of his fallen brothers and sisters, melted down and stamped with the symbol of the Galactic Empire, looked almost grotesque to him in that form. It wasn’t currency. It wasn’t something to be traded or sold. It had more meaning than money. And it didn’t belong in the hands of the client. 

It belonged in the hands of his people. The Tribe. And it was his duty to secure it. This is the way- he could already hear the Armorer’s modulated voice speaking the words as she hammered away at the metal, forming it back into a piece of gleaming, impenetrable plating. He could already see the flashes of his past that sparked each time he watched her work, the flames melting the walls he built around the memory of the last time he saw his parents. Each strike was a blast that brought him back to that day- his mother’s arms strong and tight as she hugged him one more time, his father’s steadfast determination to get him to safety. The day his future was written- in blood and beskar. 

Even though he hated the thought of being paid in it, there was no scenario in which he was presented with the metal in any amount or form and he denied it. And with the promise of more upon the capture and delivery of the asset? The Mandalorian was many things but fool wasn’t one of them. This job wouldn’t be like others before it. It would no doubt be one of if not the most difficult and dangerous assignments he’d take in his life. But the unsavory demeanor of the client, the overly eager troopers, even the unusual tingling inside his own mind- none of it was enough to make him walk away from the brick or in turn, the job. Not the lack of information on the target or the zealous way that the man across from him spoke of having the asset in his custody.

But that was before. Before I saw the kid. 

He moved without wasting time to think, and without taking his eyes off of the child that was staring up at him. Before the IG unit had even locked on to the small green thing peering up at them, his right arm was raised, his blaster putting a gaping hole straight through the bounty droid’s head. 

It was supposed to be fifty years old. An adult. It... It wasn’t supposed to be a-

When the hatch on the hovering carriage that the child was tucked into opened, he saw more than the tiny being’s giant ears and enormous eyes as it shied away from the droid’s weapon. He saw himself, felt the helpless fear that he would never fully forget as the bunker that his parents had sacrificed themselves to get him to was torn open, a robotic assailant greeting him with the end of a blaster. But before he could even cover his eyes there had been another flash of movement as a man encased in armor, his face completely covered by a sleek helmet, appeared to dispatch the droid, extending a hand to help him climb out to safety. 

It wasn’t supposed to be a foundling. 

He had done his best to shake the unexpected connection to the child, closing the carrier and bringing it back to his ship, trying to treat it like any of the countless other targets that he’d captured. But it seemed that the more he tried to ignore it, the more that feeling in the back of his mind grew, two words bouncing around his brain as he set the course for Nevarro. Asset. Foundling. Asset. Foundling. Asset. Punching the shifter into drive, he took off before the other word had a chance to be the last. 

He had naively hoped that once he made the drop off, delivering his quarry to the client, that he’d be free of the conflict- that he could collect his payment and return to the covert. That false hope popped and fell flat the second the first question was out of his mouth. 

“How many fobs did you give out?” 

It shouldn’t have mattered. 

It never had before. Occasionally he’d run into another guild member while on assignment, and, more often than that he’d have to stave off other sloppier, non- guild hunters and mercenaries. High value targets tended to draw a lot of greedy attention from multiple sources. He had always come out on top, leaving his challengers empty-handed or incapacitated, and his target shackled or dead. Their presence was always negligible to him. Guild or not, no other bounty hunter came close to the Mandalorian in any measurable way. 

Instead of a numerical answer, the client had merely stated that obtaining the asset- the foundling. The asset. The f- had been of great importance. The man had then set a camtono on the desk, pressing a button to open the pressurized unit and silencing the war of words. It was more pure beskar than he had ever seen outside of the covert. Stacks. He’d been drawn to it like a woolly moth to a flame, mesmerized by its dark shine. Stacks of the invaluable metal that belonged to his people, the people who had saved him, raised him, made him what and who he was. Taking another step, he couldn’t resist reaching out to touch it, feel it’s weight and know for sure that it was real. Stacks of the very same beskar that had been pillaged from the corpses of men and women who had taken the very same creed that he had.

He wondered what illicit riches the client had used to tempt the others into taking this job. Setting the bricks back into the container with the rest, he wondered if perhaps some of them hadn’t been offerings, but threats. He wouldn’t put it past the man, who still proudly wore the empire’s symbol around his neck- the symbol that had been pressed into each brick of beskar, as though it gave him some kind of right to possess it. He wondered why he was wondering these things, and before he could answer himself yet another question was tumbling from his lips; one brought on by movement in the corner of his vision as the child’s carriage trailed behind the doctor into an adjoining room. 

“What are you going to do with it?” 

While asking questions about the fates of the unfortunate beings he collected, most frozen in carbonite to keep them quiet and cooperative for the return journey, wasn’t standard procedure for a guild bounty hunter, following his instincts was, and the prickling had not ceased even after the camtono was sealed and handed over to him. 

If anything it had become less of a needling, nagging feeling, and more of an acidic burn. 

He hadn’t gotten an answer. He’d been paid, the job finished. It was time to move on. What was it that the client had said? Those parting words that had been laced with authoritarian venom? Something about restoring balance, about the beskar being returned to the Mandalorians, and things being as they should be? 

Why then, had the entire trek back to the covert been consumed with those large round eyes as they seemed to plead with him not to leave? Where before there were two words, now there was just one. 

Foundling. 

It echoed through his brain with each spur studded step he took through the city. It followed him as he descended to the underground hideout that the Tribe had been forced into. It was what he heard when another Mandalorian had called his honor into question. Coward, the man had called him. 

Was he right? 

The Armorer had ended the scrum by reminding both men of the creed they’d taken. This is the way, she’d stated with finality before continuing to forge the beskar he’d reclaimed into a sleek new full set of armor. Again he saw his past with each strike of her tools against the hot metal. Again he saw himself in the same position that he’d found the child in. He’d refused the Mudhorn as his signet, and he’d left the excess beskar to be used for the foundlings under the Tribe’s care. But neither of those acts of penance erased the thing that had replaced the prickling; the guilt of turning the child over to those men and their agenda. 

“The foundlings are our future.” 

“I was once a foundling.” 

Beskar may hold up against most forms of force. But not even the glinting, impenetrable breastplate he now wore could keep the guilt from curling around his heart beneath it. It squeezed tight as he reached for the small round piece that the child had unscrewed from the gear shifter. 

This is wrong. This one is… He swallowed, eyes locked on to the silver orb between his fingers. This is wrong. 

Slipping the ball safely into his pocket, he quickly flicked every switch back to the off position, the Razor Crest’s engines powering down as he stood. 

The conflict between code and creed had come to a head, one superseding the other by a large margin of personal importance. He was a guild bounty hunter, and he’d delivered the asset to the client. 

But he was a Mandalorian first, and the child was now his responsibility. 

This is the way.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr @the-blind-assassin-12 🙂


End file.
